It is great to be back in the saddle again. My feet still ache thinking about my trip to WDW and my never ending quest for Vinylmation trade boxes. Thanks so much to Pete for covering for me. I got back home at the perfect time apparently. This week was another amazing week in the short, short history of Vinylmation Kingdom. Our readers, fans, and staff have conspired again to make it our Best Week Ever.

Monday

Monday begin with our weekly VK Power Rankings. This week, we ranked the top chasers and variants. This was also our first week with the expanded voting group and I must say I was quite pleased with the effort of the staff. In addition to the VK Power Rankings, Monday brought us the first ever “-Ions” by Scuba Owl. A very clever approach!

Tuesday

Tuesday was my first full day back from Disney and it started off with one of my favorite Vinylmation Kingdom Features: Xero’s Showcase. That kid makes me jealous each week with the Vinyls in her collection. Tuesday also gave us word of the Park Series releases of the Up and Alien Encounter vinylmations. June 24th cannot come quick enough for many. On our Facebook page, we also started a giveaway for a Buzz Lightyear, Festival of Lights, and an Urban 6 Combo Topper. The winners to be chosen on Wednesday.

Wednesday

First things first, the winners of our Facebook giveaways were Katie Knopp, Kristen “AlmostMitchell” Farrell, and Zachary Adams! Congrats to all three. On the site, Xero took a different approach to his normal Xeros and Heros. Frankly, I’m glad he did. If he would have said something nice about this new series, I might have been forced to spread the rumor that he secretly loves the new mold.

Thursday

Thursday was a busy day throughout the Vinylmation Kingdom. The day started with a workout for the brain via Poncho Pete’s Dollars and Sense analysis of 9/3 combo sets. Excellent read. Later in the morning, I posted a story based on banners I personally viewed at Epcot’s Mission: Space.These banners gave us a glimpse of some future vinylmation releases. Lastly, we gave away our first Monthly 9 inch Vinylmation. We’ve been advertising the Vinylmation Villains Jumba giveaway for a few weeks. Today, Jarrod Crotchett’s name was drawn out of a hat (An EPCOT World Showcase hat to be exact) and he will be getting Jumba in his mailbox very soon! Thanks again to all who have joined our site and were eligible for the drawing!

Friday

Don’t get me started on Friday. As we all know, Friday was the day that the Disney Afternoon “Goof Troop” set was going to be released exclusively online at Disneystore.com. As per usual, they screwed it up. BIG TIME. So here is what happened. The set had a LE of 1000. Standard vinylmation policy is for LE releases to have a limit of 2 per customer. The 9 inch Moai that Pete previewed and the Angel/Devil set that released  Friday followed this standard procedure. Oh but DS.com forgot to put the limit of 2 on the Goof Troop set. What happened in response really shows you the kind of scum bags that have migrated to eBay. People began buying 10,20, 50,100 of these sets at a time. I’m not joking since the entire set sold out in 10 minutes. Now, eBay is littered with greedy, pathetic scumbags selling 10 or so Goof Troops sets per username for a minimum of $70. Let me just say, you people make me sick.

To make matters worse, Disneystore.com has the worst inventory control system of any major company I have ever dealt with. Remember how I said the vinylmation set sold out in 10 minutes? It took the Disneystore at least 45 minutes to figure this out. My purchase went through at about the 10-11 minute mark. I got the email saying my order was complete and everything. Believe me, I’m not just complaining that the set sold out so quickly.

An hour or so later, I started hearing rumblings on the VK forums that they were cancelling orders. So, I checked my email. Nothing. I went to disneystore.com and logged into my account. When I looked at my order, I then noticed that the status said “closed” and the total I owed/paid now said $0. They had cancelled my order and not even had the common courtesy to even tell me. By this point, it is only 8 am. I had been awake all night. I called Disney. I was quite mad but I didn’t take it out on the poor people answering the phones. Now if they had let me talk to the idiots who put the vinylmation up for sale on the site or the people in I.T. maybe I would have been rude. Anyways, the customer service rep seemed confused and said “Oh sorry, sir, that item is sold out.” That’s when I pointed out that I had ordered the vinylmation set, paid for it, got an email saying my order was complete. He then stammered and started reading a random line from the script. I asked for a manager. I don’t remember her name but she was nice enough. She told me she had no idea why their system would ess up that bad. I told her, “Honestly, it screws up way more than it works. I just wish somebody cared enough to fix it.” Eventually we got off the phone with the promise that my situation would be “elevated.” Word to the wise though to Disney. Telling me to have a “magical day” after you colossally botched my order and cost me a night of sleep probably isn’t the wisest way to close our conversation.

I still don’t know what “elevated” means since I never was called back.Much later in the day I did receive an email saying I was getting a $20 gift card for my troubles. Now, some of you will say that is a great solution. It actually made me madder. Why? So far in my years of collecting vinylmations, I have been screwed over by a disneystore.com mistake on LEs at least 3 times. For example, they sent me the wrong 9 inch on the day of the Park 4 Tiki Room 9 inch. I’ve still never got one of those due to that mistake. I also missed out on the Tailspin set due to Disney forgetting to put it up.  Not to mention that I’ve had mistakes on regular orders over 20 times. Almost every time, Disney’s remedy is a gift card. The mistakes are all too common. Disney wastes more money in sending out gift cards to fix their mistakes than it would cost them to buy an inventory control system that worked. Don’t tell me they have the best they can get. Lies. I order from Amazon.com at least 10 times a month. I have NEVER had a mistake in my order in over 4 years. I know mistakes happen. Everybody does. Disneystore.com just seems to think mistakes are okay. I just wish they would respect their customers enough to leave them happy and not bitter. At this point, I just wish Disneystore.com would send all their merchandise to Amazon and say “We obviously suck at our job. Please handle all our online sales.” Everybody would be better off for it.

Saturday

The day started off with me still bitter about the Goof Troop set. I was determined to work my way through it though. I woke up at 6 am because that’s when my 2 yr old told me I should wake. We get up, grab some cereal and I let her watch Dora. Take that Disney. I log onto the computer and start my daily research for the site. Within 10 minutes, I’m excited. I have found out that the Vinylmation blog accidentally posted the image for the POTC chaser in its collection section. I’m also happy to know that we’re the absolute first site to report it. YAY US! haha.

Later in the day, R2-MK posted another great Blue Sky article about a possible Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs set. We love these columns. They are fun to think about and really allow us to stretch our creativity as far as possible.

Oh and around 9 am Saturday morning, I get an email from the Disney Store entitled “Urgent Update.” Yeah you guessed it. The Urgent update that my Goof Troop order would be cancelled arrived 29 hours late. God somebody at the Disneystore really likes to open up old wounds. Yes, I’m still bitter.

I’ll see you next week with another BEST WEEK EVER!